The Sports Dope

The Harvard Athletic Council's proposal this week to remove "Games Undesirable Tension" was a step fully as farsighted as any innovation proposed at Harvard this year. While the Faculty Committee has only just begun what should be a lengthy study, this is as good a time as any to examine a plan that will revolutionize intercollegiate athletics.

The HAC plan, dubbed "pass-fail" because of its similarity to the HPC request that students' worst grades not be counted, is based on the following provision: each intercollegiate athletic team can designate, at the start of the season, one game that will not count on its final record, unless the team doesn't give a regular all-out effort.

Further discussion will be needed to determine how "regular, all-out effort" is to be defined within the traditional scoring system. The HAC guidelines include scores greater than 50-0 in football, 10-0 in hockey, and 26-1 in fencing as indicators that a team isn't meeting its requirements and should be charged with a defeat.

The selected opponent would not be told of the pass-fail designation, to ensure absolutely normal treatment of the G.U.T. less foe. The only change would be made by the sports registrar on the end-of-season won-lost record. The record would show that the team played such-and-such an opponent, but there would be no mention of the outcome.

The scheme is perhaps the first step toward the fulfillment of the true athletic philosophy: It's not who wins that matters, but how you play the game. In addition, there are immediate practical benefits. For instance, there are thousands of Harvard alumni in California who never get to see their basketball team play. A game at U.C.L.A. would provide long-desired West-Coast exposure, but up to now the embarrassment of a score like 110-28 blotting the Crimson ledger has outweighed the advantages. And with its Boston Irish-surroundings, Harvard has always been considered a "natural" football opponent of Notre Dame. But again, fear of a lopsided score has prevented the match.

The athletes themselves would benefit from the broadening and challenging new experiences possible. Playing Tufts and Brown beefs up the record and improves chances for post-season honors, but those games supply very little athletic reward.

One main objection is that certain teams (like Dartmouth's eleven and Princeton's five) may be flooded with G.U.T. less opponents. Some League officials suggest giving teams the option of declining to schedule half-hearted opposition, but that view shows a lack of understanding for the undeniably valid principles involved.

Columbia's recent decision to withhold individual statistics from the ECAC bureau was a wise move in the same direction. Statistics may be kept for the internal operations of the coaches, but releasing them to higher authorities puts an undue, irrelevant pressure on individual performance that is out of keeping with the nature of team sports. Harvard should follow suit.

One last note: The Faculty has approved the proposed department of Sports Folklore and Mythology. The demand for this field has long been apparent -- most specifically in the consistently over-subscribed Celtic 10ab, which studies Red Auerbach's two decades of coaching. And now that Arthur Daly has accepted the new Folklore chair, the department ought to be an overwhelming success next fall. After all, there are as many April Fools in athletics as anywhere.